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I do not think I have any documents that if I lost would ruin me and most of my "stuff" is information I enjoy collecting (e.g. places I want to visit, technical articles, etc.).

I saw the articles on scanning PDFs to a file and than letting local EN monitor the file so that the computer processes the PDFs in batches and at first seemed too complicated for what I do but now seems more interesting as I do more scanning.

I signed up for the Premium service so I am assuming I do not really need to have the scanner do the OCR since EN will be doing it for me?? If you do a ScanSnap OCR and an EN online OCR are two better than one??

Finally, I don't want to make a lot of back ups ... paper is already pain and I don't want to complicate my life with lots of back ups.

So, my plan is:

1) set up the scan to file and EN batch process to speed things along. So, not have the ScanSnap do the OCR but let EN online do it.

2) erase the scanned file after it has been processed by EN since I really do not need the document that badly.

3) trust that EN online has a good backup up process and I will not back up the local machine knowing EN online will let me look back a few version if I get desperate.

4) I will scan the documents (e.g. articles on places to live for example) to separate sheets to make them more useful as suggested above though I wonder if multi-page articles would be better kept together??

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I do not think I have any documents that if I lost would ruin me and most of my "stuff" is information I enjoy collecting (e.g. places I want to visit, technical articles, etc.).

I saw the articles on scanning PDFs to a file and than letting local EN monitor the file so that the computer processes the PDFs in batches and at first seemed too complicated for what I do but now seems more interesting as I do more scanning.

I signed up for the Premium service so I am assuming I do not really need to have the scanner do the OCR since EN will be doing it for me?? If you do a ScanSnap OCR and an EN online OCR are two better than one??

Hi. Welcome to the forums! Evernote will do the OCR for you. You do not need to do it yourself. There are a few restrictions, but it does not sound like you will need to worry about them.

Finally, I don't want to make a lot of back ups ... paper is already pain and I don't want to complicate my life with lots of back ups.

On the Mac, plug in an external hard drive every once in a while and it does the rest (Time Machine). For the truly lazy, Sugarsync (cloud backup) will do the Evernote folder automatically. For the extreme version of lazy, Carbonite will do your whole drive, and you don't even have to point it to the Evernote folder. With so many options, it is difficult to imagine why you wouldn't back up your stuff...

So, my plan is:

1) set up the scan to file and EN batch process to speed things along. So, not have the ScanSnap do the OCR but let EN online do it.2) erase the scanned file after it has been processed by EN since I really do not need the document that badly.3) trust that EN online has a good backup up process and I will not back up the local machine knowing EN online will let me look back a few version if I get desperate.

Evernote is trustworthy, but again, there really isn't any downside to backing up your data on your own. This is something that Evernote implicitly encourages through design by stressing that it is your data and so they make sure you have a copy of everything on your hard drive.

4) I will scan the documents (e.g. articles on places to live for example) to separate sheets to make them more useful as suggested above though I wonder if multi-page articles would be better kept together??

Do I have a plan? Have I missed something?

I would keep things together. I have PDFs of books, articles, etc. in notes. I extract pages on occasion, but I generally find it more useful to keep stuff from each source together.

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Finally, I don't want to make a lot of back ups ... paper is already pain and I don't want to complicate my life with lots of back ups.

That's certainly your choice. But just wait & see how complicated your life becomes if you ever lose your important data...

Seriously, making backups is not complex or complicated, especially since most backup apps can be scheduled to run automatically. Of course it's best to occasionally do some due diligence & try restoring from one to make sure the process is working.

WRT scanning... I prefer to not load a pile of papers into the feeder. Instead, I load what I want to be in the single document. I then give the file a significant name such as "places I want to visit - Costa Rica". I can then leave a copy of it on my PC's hard drive, where I can quickly/easily find it using Locate32 (which runs a single search across all my many hard drives). I also place a copy in an EN import folder where it gets sucked into EN & then the note title is defaulted to the file name. I can then also easily search EN for this note.

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To clarify ... I backup my financials on my machine and two externals and the cloud ... I can not bring myself to put the same amount of safe guards into magazine articles about places to visit .... I am trying to move paper from being a burden that I constantly worry about to something that I enjoy when I can ...

What I ended up doing was:

Took my folder of "places to visit"

ScanSnapped to a PDF

I set the scanner to multi-page ... I only scanned in one page for one pager and multiple pages for multi-pagers ... that way it resemble the physical article ...

I did not do any pre-OCRing and figured I would let EN do that.

It was kind or easy just feeding in paper and having it show up in EN on my computer ... I just selected "Places to Visit" folder and the documents just flowed in ..

I did have some concerns about what quality to pick ... the better the quality the bigger the size ...I picked one up from normal since that seemed to be a good compromise ...

A few things I would like to clear up ...

If I write a list of ideas and scan them in ....I understand EN will decipher the hand writing ... can I scan in the handwritten notes into a PDF or do they need to go into a JPG to get the decipher option?? I would prefer to stay with one profile and PDF and not have to think about this too much.

It appears that I can export my PDFs from EN if needed?? At least with a piece of paper it transcends technology (tape, diskette, CD, DVD) so I assume all the PDFs could be moved and converted to something else years from now?? I think about this because I just had all my parent's slides converted to a DVD and now wonder how long I have until DVDs are gone ... the 80 year old picture album is still going strong ...

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If I write a list of ideas and scan them in ....I understand EN will decipher the hand writing ... can I scan in the handwritten notes into a PDF or do they need to go into a JPG to get the decipher option?? I would prefer to stay with one profile and PDF and not have to think about this too much.

It appears that I can export my PDFs from EN if needed?? At least with a piece of paper it transcends technology (tape, diskette, CD, DVD) so I assume all the PDFs could be moved and converted to something else years from now?? I think about this because I just had all my parent's slides converted to a DVD and now wonder how long I have until DVDs are gone ... the 80 year old picture album is still going strong ...

If you want Evernote to attempt to decipher your handwriting, it will need to be in JPG format. As of the current time, Evernote doesn't decipher handwriting in a PDF.

Regarding exporting PDFs, yes you can. This is particularly easy on the Mac with the new Save Attachments feature that they added, but I am sure that will be coming to other platforms too.

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Regarding exporting PDFs, yes you can. This is particularly easy on the Mac with the new Save Attachments feature that they added, but I am sure that will be coming to other platforms too.

I am using Windows now but will be switching to MAC next year ... will that be an issue with EN?

I was thinking all I would need to do was install the MAC client and my notes would sync off the web to the MAC client??

I thought all the clients would sync back and forth so for the most part I would be platform agnostic ... though I did notice that the PDFs I just scanned in from "places I would like to visit" show up in the preview window on my windows client but only the PDF icon shows up on the preview window on my online client ... of course, I can click on the PDF and see the document??

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Regarding exporting PDFs, yes you can. This is particularly easy on the Mac with the new Save Attachments feature that they added, but I am sure that will be coming to other platforms too.

I am using Windows now but will be switching to MAC next year ... will that be an issue with EN?

I was thinking all I would need to do was install the MAC client and my notes would sync off the web to the MAC client??

I thought all the clients would sync back and forth so for the most part I would be platform agnostic ... though I did notice that the PDFs I just scanned in from "places I would like to visit" show up in the preview window on my windows client but only the PDF icon shows up on the preview window on my online client ... of course, I can click on the PDF and see the document??

No problems. It's like magic. I did it one year ago.

The PDF thing is changed in Preferences on the Mac by going to Clippings and viewing inline or as attachments.

One thing to note is that there are significant differences in the user interface. Some people are deeply attached to certain things like search explanations (unavailable in Mac) and raise a big stink about it on the forums, because Windows has it. There is nowhere to go at the moment to see the differences in interfaces, but if you ask here about some of your favorite things, users here can offer screenshots and advice.

Of course, if there does turn out to be a feature you just cannot live without, like green-colored notes, then you could always run Evernote in Bootcamp mode (Windows on the Mac)

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Any idea when EN does PDF OCRing or how long it takes ? I looked at the PDFs I scanned in yesterday and they appear to still be pictures. I am trying to highlight the text to see if the file was OCRed. Is there a flag or indicator to say OCR was done?

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Also, suggestions welcome on next step ... unimportant stuff scanned great into EN ... now the important stuff like financials ...

So, I want to replace my physical file cabinet with a virtual one on EN ... but I want to make sure my wife can access it ... so I am assuming I can either give here my ID and PW or share my folders with her ... has anyone done this - replacing a physical file cabinet with a virtual one and shared it with a spouse or partner so everyone knows where the important documents are kept?

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Also, suggestions welcome on next step ... unimportant stuff scanned great into EN ... now the important stuff like financials ...

So, I want to replace my physical file cabinet with a virtual one on EN ... but I want to make sure my wife can access it ... so I am assuming I can either give here my ID and PW or share my folders with her ... has anyone done this - replacing a physical file cabinet with a virtual one and shared it with a spouse or partner so everyone knows where the important documents are kept?

1. OCR takes a period of time that seems to vary and be outside of your control. I do not know how to find out if something has been OCR'd. When I check on my PDFs, I have some that indicate attachment status (see the information icon in the top right), but I have some from months ago that still have not been indexed. I am not sure what this means, but since I OCR my own things, and these PDFs are too large for Evernote to OCR, that might mean it will always be this way. I guess I am not sure what "indexed" means. It seems to have been indexed for the seach.

2. Virtual file cabinets are what Evernote does best. I started with my file cabinets, moved to my bookshelves, and now I have almost everything in Evernote (I still have a few hundred books to digitize, but I am eating my way through them).

3. Sharing with a spouse. Hmmmm.... Well, I keep everything in Evernote, and as much as I love my spouse, I prefer to have a few things that she doesn't see. It isn't that I have created notebooks of ***** (you know someone out there has) or keep love letters from all of my mistresses in there. I have stupid things like birthday gift research and so forth that probably are not so secret, but are still things I would rather not show. Anyhow, we have separate accounts and share notebooks as needed. To me, this seems like the ideal approach.

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hmm ... I am wondering if I should revert back to OCRing my docments in ScanSnap just in case EN does not get around to it or the docs fail some criteria ... do you get better results by double OCRing (ScanSnap + EN)??

On the spouse ... well ... if I die, my wife needs to know where the insurance papers are, the online PW and Pins, the copy of the will, all the account info which use to be in the physical file cabinet.

It would be sad to stick your wife and kids with even more pain because they can not access the accounts to pay for groceries and the mortgage.

A "scanned" page contains no more than 512 characters of regular, searchable text (e.g. this is enough for a text-based fax header or similar). PDF files that have already been processed by a separate OCR system will not satisfy this condition and will be rejected.

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hmm ... I am wondering if I should revert back to OCRing my docments in ScanSnap just in case EN does not get around to it or the docs fail some criteria ... do you get better results by double OCRing (ScanSnap + EN)??

On the spouse ... well ... if I die, my wife needs to know where the insurance papers are, the online PW and Pins, the copy of the will, all the account info which use to be in the physical file cabinet.

It would be sad to stick your wife and kids with even more pain because they can not access the accounts to pay for groceries and the mortgage.

Hi. I OCR everything. I am sure Evernote's OCR would be fine for most people. And, I am certainly glad it is there. But, there are some concrete benefits to doing it yourself.

(1) On the Mac, your Evernote account is indexed, so that everything is also searchable from outside the application. I use HoudahSpot, but I think you can use Spotlight if you'd like.

(2) No need to worry about OCR limitations (as mentioned by jb)

(3) You can be more precise. A lot of my documents have a mix of languages, and OCR does a lot better at deciphering text if it knows what language it is looking at.

(4) You can enjoy the benefits of OCR immediately, instead of waiting.

By the way, it is my understanding that Evernote does not re-OCR anything that is already OCR'd.

As for the account thing, of course your wife ought to have your passwords and access to everything! I don't care if she finds out about her birthday present research after I die! But, I do while I am alive, and it is a little easier to have some privacy when we have separate accounts. We don't share email accounts for the same reason. Like I said, sharing a notebook full of all the important documents will make it possible for her to access them just as if she was in your account, so it seems like the ideal solution to me.

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hmm ... I am wondering if I should revert back to OCRing my docments in ScanSnap just in case EN does not get around to it or the docs fail some criteria ... do you get better results by double OCRing (ScanSnap + EN)??

On the spouse ... well ... if I die, my wife needs to know where the insurance papers are, the online PW and Pins, the copy of the will, all the account info which use to be in the physical file cabinet.

It would be sad to stick your wife and kids with even more pain because they can not access the accounts to pay for groceries and the mortgage.

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So, after scanning all my receipts in I wanted to test recovery and tranportability ... so I clicked on export and the formats offered are ENEX, html, mht.

I was thinking the export would be PDF??

I scanned in the receipts into EN and deleted the PDF thinking EN stored the PDFs in the cloud?

I don't have to keep the PDFs do I?? The more things to keep up with the more complicated it gets.

Hi. Actually, Evernote makes it pretty simple. Export as HTML and it will produce folders with html documents and associated attachments contained within them. If you are on a Mac, it stores your files so that they are searchable with Spotlight or any other search software. On Windows, as I understand it, Evernote stores files in a database, and the contents are not searchable from outside of the application. So, if you want to find something on the Mac, you don't even have to export it. Just type in the filename or a keyword, locate the PDF, copy, and paste it into your documents (or wherever you want to use it).

Anyhow, give the export to HTML feature a try. I think you will be pleased with the results.

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So, after scanning all my receipts in I wanted to test recovery and tranportability ... so I clicked on export and the formats offered are ENEX, html, mht.

I was thinking the export would be PDF??

I scanned in the receipts into EN and deleted the PDF thinking EN stored the PDFs in the cloud?

I don't have to keep the PDFs do I?? The more things to keep up with the more complicated it gets.

Warning bells went off when I read this. Please set up a system to backup your Evernote on a regular basis. If you scan through these forums, you will see several stories where people did not have a backup. Yes, if everything is handled properly, you can retrieve your information from the cloud, but things do not always go as hoped.

If you are using Windows and you only want the individual PDF file, you can right click it and save it to your hard drive.

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So, after scanning all my receipts in I wanted to test recovery and tranportability ... so I clicked on export and the formats offered are ENEX, html, mht.

I was thinking the export would be PDF??

I scanned in the receipts into EN and deleted the PDF thinking EN stored the PDFs in the cloud?

I don't have to keep the PDFs do I?? The more things to keep up with the more complicated it gets.

Warning bells went off when I read this. Please set up a system to backup your Evernote on a regular basis. If you scan through these forums, you will see several stories where people did not have a backup. Yes, if everything is handled properly, you can retrieve your information from the cloud, but things do not always go as hoped.

If you are using Windows and you only want the individual PDF file, you can right click it and save it to your hard drive.

GM's suggestion would be better for larger numbers of exports.

Correct on all counts. Backup, backup, backup. Time Machine for Mac. Oops!Backup (?) for Windows. I do a daily backup on one external drive, I have my current projects in Dropbox, and past projects (unchanging items like PDFs of books) get archived on two external hard drives -- one in my office and one at home. Evernote is on the daily backup, and also on the archived drives. Considering how inexpensive backup solutions are these days, not having something is a little like leaving your doors unlocked all the time. Sure, probably nothing will happen, but why take the chance?

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In Windows if I right click on the middle screen and export, I get the html ... If I right click on the right screen I can save as a PDF ... I have not interest in keeping anything on my computer and backing it up anymore... I am hoping to move to only being cloud based so I never have to worry about backups, etc. and can move from computer to computer , home, office, cafe in the future. Multiple HDDs, external HDDs, network HDDs, tape, thumb drives, etc. are a pain ... My only concern is if EN closes up shop how do I migrate my files to the next cloud provider.

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In Windows if I right click on the middle screen and export, I get the html ... If I right click on the right screen I can save as a PDF ... I have not interest in keeping anything on my computer and backing it up anymore... I am hoping to move to only being cloud based so I never have to worry about backups, etc. and can move from computer to computer , home, office, cafe in the future. Multiple HDDs, external HDDs, network HDDs, tape, thumb drives, etc. are a pain ... My only concern is if EN closes up shop how do I migrate my files to the next cloud provider.

Hi. Use the method that I mentioned if you would like to ensure that you can export everything. Export is best for multiple notes (your entire account), while jb's method is best for individual notes. Either way, your data is portable. That is one of Evernote's principles.

As for having no external drives, that will be a little difficult if you have more than a few hundred gigabytes of data. I have several terabytes. But, assuming you have, for example, 150 gigabytes of data, you could purchase very affordable plans from Sugarsync, Dropbox, or Google Drive for storing it. I would strongly recommend that you store your files in more than one cloud service, but that is up to you. As for an external drive being cumbersome, you just plug it in, and then unplug it each day. Throw it in a drawer if you'd like. There really is nothing painful at all about it. But, that is your call.

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This is a dangerous mindset. No matter who you pay, or how much, or how often, the only one responsible for your data is *you*. Does it matter if you can sue a company for losing some precious piece of data if the data is unrecoverable, no matter what the cost?

Best of luck to you in any case.

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This is a dangerous mindset. No matter who you pay, or how much, or how often, the only one responsible for your data is *you*. Does it matter if you can sue a company for losing some precious piece of data if the data is unrecoverable, no matter what the cost?

Best of luck to you in any case.

Here is my logic ... I have a HDD on my computer with a failure rate of X, a similar HDD is in my external enclosure with a a similar failure rate ... the cloud folks also use a similar hard drive with the same failure rate ... so all my HDDs are probably similar to all theirs HDDs... you gain availability by being redundant on two HDDs or two cloud services ... there is nothing special about the physical HDD in your computer or enclosure ... they are the same failure prone mechanical devices used on the cloud ... my point is having all these contingency plans - my HDD, ghost to an external, copy to a cloud is wearing me out ... it is almost as bad as keeping up with the paper I worked so hard to digitize. So, don't fear the cloud ... just be redundant.

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This is a dangerous mindset. No matter who you pay, or how much, or how often, the only one responsible for your data is *you*. Does it matter if you can sue a company for losing some precious piece of data if the data is unrecoverable, no matter what the cost?

Best of luck to you in any case.

Here is my logic ... I have a HDD on my computer with a failure rate of X, a similar HDD is in my external enclosure with a a similar failure rate ... the cloud folks also use a similar hard drive with the same failure rate ... so all my HDDs are probably similar to all theirs HDDs... you gain availability by being redundant on two HDDs or two cloud services ... there is nothing special about the physical HDD in your computer or enclosure ... they are the same failure prone mechanical devices used on the cloud ... my point is having all these contingency plans - my HDD, ghost to an external, copy to a cloud is wearing me out ... it is almost as bad as keeping up with the paper I worked so hard to digitize. So, don't fear the cloud ... just be redundant.

I get the redundancy thing, but I don't see how this is going to work better in real life. I guess I am not willing to pay several hundred dollars a year for 1 or 2 TB of data. Who doesn't have a few dozen gigabytes of music, movies, PDFs, pictures, etc. sitting around on their hard drive these days?

Something like Time Machine just does the backup, all you have to do is plug it in, and when you need the data on it, it is immediately available.

For the truly lazy, Time Capsule will do it over WiFi and you won't even know it is backing things up. It just does it. Then, the data is in your hands. If you need to access it, it is immediately available.

Rebuilding files from a service like Carbonite can be done, but it won't be pretty. I had a kernel panic and (long story short) ended up wiping my drive two days ago (true story). I was planning on upgrading to the new MBA anyhow, so it was oddly fortuitous timing (as my spouse was quick to note). Within minutes, I was back to work, and by the end of the evening, I had everything I needed in my computer and ready to go. No data loss.

You've found what works for you, and that is cool, but the reasoning about it being too troublesome doesn't seem very persuasive to me

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Don't misread me; I don't fear the cloud whatsoever. I'm probably more cloud-ed than a good many people, but in no way am I not also backing up the data I want to make sure I can't afford to lose, no matter where I put it.

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Keep in mind that it's very easy to create pdf files with Acrobat (comes with snapscan) and then to combine them at a later stage. For example, right now you may have seperate pdf's for various projects but you may want to archive them later into one pdf. Or you may have seperate pdf's for various bills and receipts and may want to join them all together at the end of the year etc. You can do this within seconds/minutes once you know how it's done. Therefore, you don't' have to agonize regarding putting all the do*****ents together now or later. Here's my workflow for combining pdf's into one larger one:

-In Evernote I highlight the notes that contain the pdf's that I want to combine (using the shift key)

-I right click and select "Save attachments" (I save it to an empty folder)

-Once I see those pdf's in the empty folder I select them all,right click and choose "combine supported files in Acrobat"

-You will then be taken to a dialog box where you can shuffle them in the order that you want them combined.

That's it. Couldn't be easier to combine files and only takes a minute. Splitting files into smaller pdf's is easy also. Therefore, you can do it whatever way you feel comfortable without worrying about will I need to combine them or split them later.

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A cautionary tale. A month ago our electricity went out during a thunderstorm. Despite surge protectors, when the power came back my Verbatim external hard drive wouldn't start up again. That's the drive that contains my one and only Time Machine backup.

I got a new external hard drive...AND signed up with Carbonite. But I spent a few days without any backup at all. Very scary.

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A cautionary tale. A month ago our electricity went out during a thunderstorm. Despite surge protectors, when the power came back my Verbatim external hard drive wouldn't start up again. That's the drive that contains my one and only Time Machine backup.

I got a new external hard drive...AND signed up with Carbonite. But I spent a few days without any backup at all. Very scary.

Good suggestion and example.

I've been using Carbonite for a couple years. It is reassuring to know there is an offsite location backing up my data 24/7.

It only costs $60 a year.

And with the premium service, they offer Courier Recovery service. They will ship a copy of your backup shipped to you.

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Yep. I am into redundancy. I was suggesting TC as a solution for the truly lazy (I hear there is a lawsuit pending about someone who lost TC data). I definitely do not recommend having just one thing, but it beats having nothing!

If you are willing to put in a minimal amount of effort (signing up for something like Carbonite) you can have pretty reliable protection. I'm into redundancy. The more the better. I always have multiple copies of everything, and the cloud is a big part of it, though I canceled my account with Carbonite

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I have one external at work and one at home and Ghost to each each week ... I can recover from anything in an hour ... I am in the process of retiring and will be travelling all the time and toting around multiple external drives just won't work anymore. I have moved all the apps to the cloud and want the backup to be there too ... I want to be physical device independent such that I can grab any machine in the house and do my work ... sort of like email ... I can go to the library or cafe if needed to do my email, taxes, banking, finances, email, bill paying, etc. ... note, the thread started with me wanting to rid myself of paper by getting all of it in EN ... I do not want to keep the originals since the defeats the purpose of going paperless.and I really do not want to have multiple backups in case EN dies ...

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I have one external at work and one at home and Ghost to each each week ... I can recover from anything in an hour ... I am in the process of retiring and will be travelling all the time and toting around multiple external drives just won't work anymore. I have moved all the apps to the cloud and want the backup to be there too ... I want to be physical device independent such that I can grab any machine in the house and do my work ... sort of like email ... I can go to the library or cafe if needed to do my email, taxes, banking, finances, email, bill paying, etc. ... note, the thread started with me wanting to rid myself of paper by getting all of it in EN ... I do not want to keep the originals since the defeats the purpose of going paperless.and I really do not want to have multiple backups in case EN dies ...

Interesting. It looks like you have a good sense of what is available and what you need. I'd still recommend lugging around an external drive for backup (Time Machine if you are on the Mac), because they are now about the size and weight of a mobile phone, can be encrypted, and hold all of the data you are likely to need (up to 1TB for most models). But, if you are not generating many files outside of Evernote anyhow, then Evernote alone will be fine. They take data security and storage seriously, so you are unlikely to encounter any issues. Evernote won't die, but data loss is about the only worry I have, so I just prefer to have my own something "just in case". As an alternative, you might take an old computer, install Evernote, and login to it (remotely if necessary) every once in a while to sync with the servers. This is essentially a backup of Evernote, and will give you peace of mind.